My Lords, I said at Second Reading, putting the register aside for a moment, that we as a society have a responsibility to ensure that all our children are safe, secure and educated. If that is not happening, we need to ask why and what we can simply do to make sure that every child is safe and educated.
Over the last seven or eight years, I have put down a whole series of Written Questions asking how many children are missing from our school rolls, such that we do not even know where they are. The answer is that we do not know. The best we can do currently—this
goes back to 2018-19—is information from the National Crime Agency, which, by the way, identifies as missing anyone whose whereabouts cannot be established and who may be the subject of a crime or at risk of harm to themselves; examples include child trafficking, getting involved in drug pushing, et cetera. It concluded that there are 216,707 children missing whose whereabouts we do not know. That is a very low figure. I think it is considerably higher than that.
For me, that is what this debate is about: protecting children and making sure that they are safe, secure and educated. That is why I welcome these measures on home education and congratulate the Government on having the courage to pick up this political hot potato and try to do something about it—it is not perfect; I take it for granted that there are some concerns—and about unregistered schools.
Of course, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle was right about parents’ rights and values, but society has to make sure that, when children are in schools which are not subject to any checks or inspections, they are not being taught the most appalling practices, which Ofsted highlights in its reports. There have been a couple of cases where it has taken those schools to court and managed to close them down—the right reverend Prelate would be horrified if he knew. One such school, which was not unregistered, was a Christian school as well; I am happy to talk to him privately about it.
Let us understand where we are coming from in this debate. We all have anecdotal evidence of home tuition and teaching. I listened with great interest to the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Wei, and his worries about what might happen. I accept that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is absolutely right that there have been some appalling practices by local authorities; there have also been some fantastic practices by them, which should be the model for how we behave. That is why I will suggest in the next group that local authorities appoint home school co-ordinators.
I have been struck by the number of emails I have had—I think it was 82 at the last count—from home educators. They have concerns, of course, or they would not be emailing me, but I come away thinking, “Wow, what a tremendous job you’re doing.” I have met some of them. I met one last week, who told me about how she had ignited an interest in the Tudors in her daughter. I thought again, “What a tremendous job you’re doing.” However, those actually doing the work of home tuition are perhaps seeing problems that will not be there.
We need a simple register which collects some simple information. I did not know and was quite surprised to learn that independent schools do not provide any data—that is a new one on me. They should be doing so. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, rightly said, we should know where all our children are—whether they are in school, home educated, in an unregistered school or in the independent sector. Let that be the rallying call from these amendments.